Having hit its ambitious $5 million stretch goal, Burton’s company will now be bringing Reading Rainbow to Android as well as the Xbox, PlayStation, Apple TV, and Roku. Originally, Burton had only announced plans to bring Reading Rainbow to the web. Reading Rainbow‘s campaign estimates that the web portion should be ready by next May.

Some of the additional funding is also going toward giving schools free access to Reading Rainbow‘s website and apps. Burton plans to provide free access for a year to at least 7,500 classrooms using the first $5 million, and his company will put the additional $400,000 entirely toward free access for classrooms as well. Altogether, Burton’s campaign is one of the most successful ever to go through Kickstarter. Though it didn’t set a new monetary record — still falling far behind the Pebble smartwatch — it did set a new record for backers, ending with a total over 100,000.

It’ll go down as one of the most successful and memorable Kickstarter campaigns of all time. Not only did it offer a chance to bring back a classic and influential series, it is going to do a lot of good in communities that might not have had the chance to do so. And as Burton noted in the original Kickstarter video, the swag wasn’t so bad either.

If you’re a fan of Community, you might remember that Troy (Donald Glover) was last seen heading for a year on the seas with LeVar as his erstwhile first mate. But as a friend of LeVar’s, Donald still wanted to help, so we’re doing something special:
Donald Glover will join LeVar for a special Reading Rainbow Live ONLINE event, where they’ll read stories to you and children live over the internet, while broadcasting from a boat.

That’s right: from a boat.

It will be a long time until we see a Kickstarter like this again. It certainly takes the entire Zach Braff fiasco and sweeps it under the rug before covering it in awesomeness.

Awesome I’m glad they hit their goal. I wish I could have donated more but it’s just really nice to see that people on the internet are willing to put their energy and time into something other than racism, porn and trolling when a legitimately good cause comes up.

FYI: Tomorrow internet business as usual will continue at 8:00am with racism, followed by 10am porn and 10:05am trolling.

This makes me very happy. I’m actually looking forward to the new version. I think there’s enough enthusiasm among young teachers who grew up in the 80s that this will be embraced nicely in the classroom.